By Allan Olingo

Housing minister Soita Shitanda, has appointed a new National Housing Corporation (NHC) managing director and chairman.

This follows a boardroom change after former officials were either suspended or sacked in the shake-up following the allocation of houses scandals that hit the State-owned firm.

Shitanda has appointed Peter Njuguna, to replace James Ruitha, who was sacked earlier this year for his alleged participation in the housing scam. Njuguna is an architect and runs the Nairobi-based Studio Partners.

The immediate former NHC chairman, Bosire Ogero, was replaced by Issac Mogaka, a former executive director of the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation, who now takes charge as the chairman of the parastatal.

Njuguna will now take over from Patrick Bucha, who had acted as the NHC managing director for the past three months.

The appointments come as the Government struggles to review operations of the corporation in the wake of a scandal that emerged in June.

In the scandal, it was alleged that the corporation’s executives and directors had used their positions to fraudulently benefit from multiple allocations of houses, essentially denying ordinary Kenyans a chance to own the property.

New dawn?

“The Minister for Housing appoints Peter Wachira Njuguna as managing director of NHC for a period of three years with effect from October 1, 2012” read Shitanda statement in the Kenya Gazette notice. In the same notice, Shitanda revoked the appointment of Ogero and that of valuer Reginald Okumu.

Both Ogero and Okumu were appointed on the May 19, last year to be members of the board of directors of the National Housing Corporation, for a period of three years, while Ruitha was appointed on the August 8, 2009, as the managing director for the next three years.

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